Someone over at Science Blogs must have had a slow morning. In their spare time, they put together some math detailing how the Death Star (you know, from Star Wars) would work. The moon-sized spaceship and its giant laser would no doubt be an effective weapon, but disintegrating an entire planet is no easy task. In fact, thanks to a little something that we like to call “gravity”, it would take a whole lot of energy.

It turns out, according to Matt Springer’s calculations, that the destruction of an Earth-sized planet would require 2.2 x 1032 joules. That’s about a week’s worth of the Sun’s total energy output, or, in other words, an almost unfathomable amount of energy.

{ad}Check out the article for the math and the logic behind it. Don’t miss the comments, there is a pretty interesting conversation going on.